Rare Albion - the other monetary allegory
During many years of research and contemplation of economic problems, the concept of a book slowly developed, which was to be allegorical and to be called Rare Albion. The purpose was to find a way to write in a utopian manner about modern economic and monetary developments, so that imagination might take flight in a field in which it is usually absent, for fear that it will bring with it considerations that are too normative. On the other hand, one could critique modern financial thinking as lacking precisely in this quality.
In 1990, Hugh Rockoff published his seminal article, The Wizard of Oz as a Monetary Allegory, (Journal of Political Economy 98 (August 1990) pp 793-60). This provided a spur to write ‘another monetary allegory’, not now exploring Baum’s story for its monetary meaning, but taking the idea further, following the Wizard as he leaves in his air balloon and journeys we know not where. Only in Rare Albion we do know where: he arrives in a fictional land just beyond our normal awareness, a place called the Federated States of Columbia, of which Rare Albion is the island capital. Here the Wizard reviews his former ways and resolves to make good his humbug.
‘Rare Albion’ is in the first place a book, but it was also written with a film storyboard in mind and many of its scenes serve as vignettes, written with the possibility that they might lend themselves to other media, especially song and drama, as an aid to imaginative teaching.